print previewback STEVE SCAFIDI
The Weathervane
In the back of each of three
wagons a steel eye rod
each with a chain, each with
one member of a family
standing together now
for the last time, each
wagon pointed in three
directions of the compass.
The young white man
at the fourth watches
the father loaded up bodily
by a mob and when attached
firmly yanks so continuously
against the anchor and chain
he breaks his arm at the shackle
and the mother meanwhile
remembers her finest day
long ago fallen from her body
like a veil while her new
owner leers at what is left,
and the child meanwhile inside
her sixth year of breathing
the air and thinking appears
to Lincoln watching her exactly
like his sister on the day she died—
the very opposite of paralyzed,
her face contorted by tears.
Now Giddyup the drivers say
and the horses flicker their ears.
When the wagons are gone
there is only one point left
to the compass and that is a man
one day endowed by the people
and not by god who is pure loss
anyways in this study of Lincoln
for a weathervane and a lightning rod.
1831